needed to be touched, a stack of paper in its usual position, a silver propelling pencil by its side which he’d kept from his schooldays, maybe as a symbol of hope (no one could be entirely without it) that one day enough sight would come back for him to handwrite what he heard.
Once when he was out she’d polished the brass parts of his morse key to a brilliant shine, wondering if he would notice. He did: ‘I can see it glowing. Looks wonderful, I’m sure. Thank you, my love.’ But of course, he had picked up the Duraglit smell.
The ashtray needed emptying, dottle and match sticks overspilling. He often did the job himself, anything to help, but she took it to the sink for a scouring and brought it back. The wastepaper basket was usually full of discarded transcripts, mere formulae to her, ciphers and letter codes she would never ask him to explain, even if he could, but the last few days he had hardly been in his wireless room, a worrying loss of interest, as if no longer drawn by his alternative world, without which he could neither fuel nor sustain his own. Yet after such periods he always went back to it, and she wondered which was more real to him.
When the wireless didn’t hold him he brooded, though he would use a different word. Lassitude was obvious in every bone. He sat for hours, unable to move and then, not knowing how or why, he got up, took cap and stick, and set off down the steps, to walk for miles along the beach and about the town. When he came cheerfully into the house he said he hadn’t felt at all tired on his expedition, which at least proved that such lack of energy hadn’t been due to illness. ‘But then, it never would be,’ she said aloud, her palm pressing the grinder whose noise for a moment crushed out her thoughts.
It was as if a shadow had slid across the window and come into the room. She knew what it was. The heart was as fluctuating as the weather. Only a looking glass fixed its effects on the face, as much as anything could, just as the weather was still, only a moment before altering for better or worse. If you accepted such rhythms, as of course you had to, existence was tolerable, hardly ever unpleasant for long.
On first hearing the news of his blindness she said she would never look in a mirror again, because Howard could not, but there had to be one in the house otherwise he would wonder why, and she would have to tell him the reason.
The mirror showed everything she didn’t want to know about herself, so she avoided it as far as possible, only able to look by persuading herself that the image was of somebody else: easy with the small make-up used to treat a glass off-handedly, as if it had no ability to destroy her equanimity, as nothing must be allowed to since recovering from her abortion.
Her whole past with Howard, their entire life in fact, was connected to an event he was never to know about. The episode, forgotten for months at a time, had lately corroded her with haunting affect, the shadow almost meteorological – to use one of Howard’s words – in its unpleasantness. She didn’t see any justice in it, felt she had paid the price in dealing with the event all those years ago. Sensing the threat now, she let the murky pictures run through her mind so as to get rid of them sooner, though knowing they wouldn’t pass so willingly, having a power greater than her own.
The sciatic pain was as if a scalpel had gone through the nerves of her lower back. She sat by the Formica-topped table to reinforce herself, to stiffen her body like a box hedge against the wind. The colours were always dark from that time, but the day it happened had been sunny. She had called on him at his large gewgaw-strewn flat on Baker Street, passing while in town to say hello.
Dear Uncle Charles, she had known him from birth. ‘Let me show you around this rambling old place,’ he said. There was no reason to say no but if she had would it have been different? He had been watching her, and waiting. She was happy, and unknowing. In the bedroom she had no chance. He was a tall lumbering man, and she was too shocked to shout or scream. The bang across the head, and his cry – almost a shriek – that she should be ‘sensible’, made it impossible except to let him do what he wanted.
He babbled, while holding her in a maniacal grip, that he had needed her (his words) for as long as he could remember. He was incomprehensible. She had loved him as an uncle for his eternal kindness, though not in this way, if this was love, which he swore it was.
He said afterwards that she had encouraged him. The violence that was done to her was meaningless but meant everything. He had made her, and the blood proved it. Everything must be kept quiet, he said afterwards, a secret between them alone. He paid for the abortion, arranged it all, but only ever touched her that one time, terrified at what he had done. A prostitute would have been cheaper, but it was her he wanted. The operation (hard to say the real word) was so botched that she couldn’t have children even if she had wanted.
She ran the whole thing through, hoping it would be goodbye, at least for a while. Charles had died of cancer, brought on, she liked to think, by his guilt, and grief which often at the time seemed genuine enough, and reinforced by his suffering which she could hardly bear to watch when her unknowing parents took her to see him in the hospital, though nowadays she burned with shame at having felt such sorrow. How could it have happened so that no one in the family knew? He was so skilled, or frightened, and she so compliant at evading and avoiding all signs of distress. If there had been more than one side to her then, there was only one now.
She went to church occasionally, hoping to retrieve her faith, but none had come back as yet. Howard thought it was for spiritual comfort due to the isolation of their lives, and to vary her days. They had no secrets above the level at which she chose to live, and at which she had decided he must live. The shame and disgrace would never be told.
In his will Charles had made over the house for her to live in with Howard after they were married. ‘It’s a fit place for a hero,’ he said, laughing slyly as he sliced the seed cake on the tea tray when he told her. ‘And besides that, you might call it just one more bit for the war effort on my part. After all, I have this flat in town, and nobody needs more than one place.’ He had been in Whitehall throughout the war, so she didn’t see how he could feel guilty about that as well.
They stood in the rain by his grave side, and heard the panegyrics at the memorial service, Howard squeezing her hand at each remark about the dead man’s generosity and manliness. Even before death Charles had sent money to augment Howard’s pension, and then in his will left an income for them as well.
Not to accept anything would have led Howard to ask why. He reacted sensibly to their prosperity, and was grateful. ‘We must keep Charles’ photograph always on a table in the living room. He’s been marvellous, and deserves as much.’ And so they did, but she bought an identical frame for the blank side of the picture, a white sheet instead of a face, not wanting to see his staring grey eyes and bushy moustache (sheer black, though it must have been dyed) whenever she turned her head, a reminder too hard to bear. If visitors or any of the family called – rare events – she made sure to replace the real thing, in case comment was made. Not having a frame at all was impossible, because Howard could feel his way to every object in the room.
They lived just that much better by having the house and what Charles had given but, all the same, she was never free of the feeling that she had sold her soul to the devil by not having told Howard about the abortion before her marriage – there, she had said the word now – though if she had there might have been no Howard, such an event impossible for him to live with.
The recall passed at its usual slow rate, but her hands shook and she felt unsafe on her legs while flicking the kettle switch and pouring coffee grains into the pot.
Ebony the cat came into the wireless room, attracted as usual by squeals
